Travel and tourism, a sector that I love in every way.
I love managing Google Ads campaigns in this sector which – from my experience in campaigns for hotels, travel, holiday rentals, motorbike and car rentals, theme parks, spas and charters – is one of the simplest of all sectors in terms of conversions.
Let's start with a fundamental fact:
91% of travellers turn to search engines when looking for a place to stay, with the majority (80%) preferring to use Google as their most common source of travel inspiration.
Google searches are not just limited to looking for accommodation at the destination, be it a hotel or a holiday rental; Google searches extend to all services a person might need once they've arrived.
I like to give real examples:
Silvia lives in London and wants to go on holiday with her partner to Barcelona and stay in a boutique hotel (click here to read the article Google Ads for Agritourism and Boutique Hotels):
There are 1,900 searches per month (yes, about 70 per day), from the UK alone, for the keyword "Boutique Hotel Barcelona"). This is a search term with average competition levels and a YoY change of 50% (searches for this specific keyword has increased by 50% compared to the previous year – what I like to call a growing niche market, or MN+ in my notes).
It brings in continuous searches year-round and peaks in the first half of the year.
42% of people search for these keywords from desktop computers (read the other blog posts to understand how important this factor is).
At Biriwuanga, we always look for and work with niche markets:
Remember, the more specific the keyword we work with and the more we enter into a micro niche market, the less competition and the better the cost of acquiring new customers (there is more competition for the keyword "Hotel Roma" than for specific searches such as "dog friendly boutique hotel Amsterdam" or "sea view hotel with spa in Biarritz").
In Silvia's example, the cost per click could be around €2 or so.
According to Google, the average cost per conversion in the travel & toursim sector is USD 115 (around EUR 100) for search campaigns.
At Biriwuanga, as you see in the example below from a client in the travel & tourism sector, the cost per avarage conversion is €4.
How is it possible to get these kinds of results?
1. We dedicate all our efforts exclusively to Google Ads and no other services (specialisation creates excellence).
2. We are in direct contact with Google.
3. We monitor Google Ads campaigns every day.
4. It's all manual – we do not work with automated systems.
5. We can cross-reference data with several other clients in the same sector or with the same target market.
6. We analyse the behaviour flow of people who search on Google – looking at their country of residence, when they go on holiday and the time frame from when this particular target starts searching to when they convert (what we call time to conversion).
A conversion rate of 14% means that out of every 100 users who have visited the client's website, 14 have generated a conversion.
In this example, 1,016€ of campaigns have generated 28,300€ in conversion value, with a return on investment of 2685% (every 1€ invested has generated 26€).
Let's continue with the example of Silvia, who is already in Barcelona with her partner on holiday at their boutique hotel and now wants to organise a special anniversary dinner and book tickets at a spa for another day:
There are about 130,000 related searches in Barcelona every month in English alone (4000 searches per day).
The words "best restaurant Barcelona" have 12,100 monthly searches, for example (400 users with devices set to English search for it every day).
As for the spa day search:
There are about 48,000 related searches in Barcelona every month in English alone (1,600 searches per day).
And there are 480 searches for the keyword "best spa Barcelona", with 16 searches every day of the year on average, only from Barcelona in English.
Google Ads campaigns for the travel and tourism sector are a great help to generate conversions at all phases of a trip – when the user is in their country of residence organising the trip (phase 1), after booking (phase 2) and also after check-in at the destination (phase 3).
On to the next conversion!
Dean.